Updated: The article's title has been updated at 9:45 PM on 28th May, 2013 to reflect the fact that the monitor has a CCFL backlight. Apologies for the confusion.

In August 2012, Nixeus launched the VUE27, a 27" WQHD (2560x1440) S-IPS LED monitor with a $430 price tag. By providing US-based service / warranty, they managed to win over quite a big segment of the market which was being served by eBay sellers based in Korea. In addition to undercutting the price, the Nixeus unit also provided a wider variety of input ports. Our review found it to be a very decent performer for the price.

This year, Nixeus is launching the 30" WQXGA (2560x1600) version with a similar range of input ports, based on a LG panel, as usual. However, the main competition this time around is from Monoprice, and not from the eBay sellers. Monoprice has been selling a 30" WQXGA monitor with HDMI and DP ports (in addition to the standard DL-DVI) for quite some time at a price point of approximately $800. Nixeus is planning to beat that by a full $100, pricing their offering at $699.

One of the issues with the NX-VUE27 was that the HDMI port wasn't able to drive the full resolution at 60 Hz (Clarification: Only DL-DVI and DP are guaranteed to drive 2560x1600 at that refresh rate). Unfortunately, it looks like the NX-VUE30 will also have the same limitation. It is a bit disappointing since the latest AMD and NVIDIA cards have 4K enabled HDMI ports (and Haswell boards are expected to join that league when they launch).

The unit will launch on June 5th June 18th, 2013 and will initially be available for order on Amazon. (Update: Ship date set for June 18th due to FCC clearance delays, Comp-U-Plus also has a pre-order sale running for $650 with free shipping)

I've held onto it expecting a comparable quality high resolution, high refresh display technology to arrive, but so far nothing. Ever since SED/FED died, I've kind of lost hope. My FW900 has been a champ. It's over 10 years old, and it still calibrates to near perfection. The few 120Hz LCDs I've tried recently haven't been anywhere close to it. I'm hoping that 4K OLED can bring about a revolution, but only if we have a connection capable of 120Hz+ to eliminate the motion blur... and then we'll need GPUs capable of pushing games over 120fps at 4K res...